They took their name from a Lawrence Ferlinghetti poem. The first song they ever recorded was about Jack Kerouac's iconic American novel, "On The Road." They've performed alongside the late great Allen Ginsberg.

So yeah, I think it's safe to say that Rex Fowler and Neal Shulman were influenced by the Beat Generation, both "directly and indirectly," Shulman told me when I called him up this week.

"Bob Dylan was a big influence for both of us — Dylan is an icon. He's without peer. He started on the Woody Guthrie path, then the Ginsberg path. So there's an indirect beat connection there, too," said Shulman, 61, one half of the folk-rock duo that started in 1972.

Whew. OK, I'm going to stop there at the halfway mark. You get the point. These guys are pretty awesome. And they'll play the Narrows Center for the Arts in Fall River on Feb. 22.

Fowler, 66, grew up in a small town in the woods of Maine, while Shulman grew up in Manhattan.

"We both ended up in Boston in 1971 with music on our minds. It was a logical place to go for a music scene. With coffeehouses like Club 47, Boston was sort of a home for folk music at the time," Shulman said.

"I thought maybe I'd go to music school. I saw an ad in the paper and went to Boston on a whim. It wasn't even for Berklee. It was for some sort of wannabe Berklee, but I ended up going to college about as much as I went to high school. Which was not a lot. I was always struggling in school, and by the end of high school, I wasn't going."

The two met at an open mic night at the Stone Phoenix, Shulman said. "I went on and said I was looking for someone to sing with, almost like a personal ad."

After his set, Fowler "came up and said 'Nice set,' so I hung around and listened to him."

The rest, as they say, is history.

"People just responded when we started playing and singing together. Things just started to fall into place," he said.

One year to the day after they met, they cut their first eponymous album.

Fowler writes the majority of the songs, Shulman said, while "I had it in mind to be more of an accompanist. I saw David Bromberg playing with Jerry Jeff (Walker) in New York when I was 15, so that influenced me to being the accompanist," he said.

In fact, of all the great acts he's played with, Bromberg was the biggest thrill, he said.

"For me personally, it was a thrill to play with David Bromberg. ... Playing with Tim Hardin was very exciting. Springsteen, that was really interesting. The Smothers Brothers, I'll tell you, very nice people. And it was very fun to open for Bill Cosby — as a folk/rock duo, that was beyond the very narrow confines of folk."

Fowler and Shulman took their name from the Ferlinghetti poem simply because they liked the way it sounded.

"There were a lot of duos who used their names — Simon & Garfunkel, Seals and Crofts. So we wanted something different," he said.

They've been compared to Simon & Garfunkel, and the comparison is pretty apt. Reviewers from the 1970s and 1980s often used terms like "east coast sensibility," "intellectual lyricism" and "ethereal harmonies" — Read: smart guys with smooth voices.

"I really connected with those guys, these two guys from Queens. I lived just on the other side of the 59th Street Bridge. They very much defined the whole singer/song-writing, two-part harmony thing," Shulman said.

Aztec's latest album, "Cause & Effect," is a concept album of topical songs of social significance.

But fear not, true fans: while they have a new album out, they're going to play all the hits.

"This is not 'Aztec Two-Step comes and plays all the songs you don't know,' which is what happened the last time I saw Tom Petty," Shulman said. "We're going to play all the hits."

The Narrows Center for the Arts is located at 16 Anawan St., Fall River. More information is available at www.narrowscenter.org.

Lauren Daley is a freelance writer and arts columnist for The Fall River Spirit. Contact her at ldaley33@gmail.com.